Bill the English Teacher's Posts

I would like to introduce Miles to my EC friends. On April 12 he will be adopted by my son and wife so he will become their son legally. They are foster parents, which in our country means they are li

Posted by Bill the English Teacher on March 21, 2010

I would like to introduce Miles to my EC friends. On April 12 he will be adopted by my son and wife so he will become their son legally. They are foster parents, which in our country means they are licensed to care for children-at-risk. Sometimes parents cannot take care of their children properly and foster parents take them into their homes and give them food, clothing, love and nurturing. Miles's parents were addicted to heroine and could no longer care for him. So after 8 months of caring for him my son and wife decided to adopt him. Usually foster children go back to their parents when the parents are rehabilitated. But this did not happen as the parents could not stop their use of heroine. The courts recently awarded my son and wife permanent custody of Miles. He is such a happy boy now and he loves his new parents as they love him.

Foster care does not always work well for children if they are passed from foster home to foster home because of behavior problems. Miles is one of the lucky ones, for sure, and so many foster parents are really good people. How does your country or culture handle children-at-risk? What do you think the pros and cons are for being a foster parent or for the children in their care? Would you want to do this kind of service or not? And what do you think about the benefits of adopting a child. What are the challenges?

THE WEATHER: THE MOST FREQUENTLY TALKED-ABOUT TOPIC IN CONVERSATION

Posted by Bill the English Teacher on April 18, 2009

Maybe this is a boring topic to open here. But I was thinking of how many times we Americans talk about the weather in conversation. We say that when we don't know what to talk about with another person or we 'run out of' (no longer have something) things to say, we can always talk about the weather.I bring this up (mention it) because I tutor a student one-on-one each week and she said in the country where she comes from they don't really talk about the weather as much as we Americans do. Her sister visited our city of Denver last year and wanted to know why the 'gringos" (Americans) always talk about the weather when they meet you. So I was wondering if this is really an American cultural thing or is it universal in many cultures.I am sensitive to this topic because the weather in Denver is quite crazy. We always say if you don't like the weather today in Denver, don't worry, it will change. Now Denver is quite a popular city now. A recent survery said that 43% of Americans would rather live in Denver than where they now live. This was the highest percentage received by any city. And one of the reasons people want to live here is the weather. Now this is sort of crazy since our weather is quite inconsistent and can change at any moment. But we are known for our sunshine on average of 300 days per year. We still have four seasons which a lot of Americans like, but none of them are terribly extreme except on occasion.But I want to show you one of our occasions. Yesterday and today Denver officially received so far from 15 centimeters to 1.04 meters of snow in its metropolitan area which consists of flat plains and the foot hills of the mountains. And more is coming. This is spring in our area. According to the gardening experts I need to dig and prepare my garden to plant the early vegetables by April 20th. Can you imagine digging a garden in this weather? However, in two days the temperature will be 21.1 celsius.So I am asking others to tell me about their crazy weather. Is the weather important in your conversations? Does it change a lot or suddenly? You can brag about your weather or complain about it. I just want to know what the rest of the world experiences in their weather and how do you react to it culturally? The photos that follow are of my house and my driveway where I put my car and the photo shows the trees next to it. Can you imagine preparing a garden in the middle of this weather? In our culture we love to complain about the weather. But we also do recognize when it is very nice as well. But weather is still the most common topic.

UNDERSTANDING 'ING' AND 'ED' WORD ENDINGS IN ENGLISH

Posted by Bill the English Teacher on April 12, 2009

An English Club learner friend of mine recently asked me a question about the following phrase: Being seriously injured which was used to talk about a dog. She expressed some confusion about our ing and ed forms. I thought that there must be others who are confused about these endings to our verbs and how we use them. So I am creating a blog to try to clear up this issue. It is a long and detailed blog. So read it little by little and try to understand a little bit at a time. If you make it to the end and understand it all, congratulate yourself because I usually teach my students all of this in 6 lessons.INGDo you ever get lost in the confusing maze of our 'ING' forms? This definitely is a confusing part of English. In English we have the ‘ing’ ending. We put it on the end of a verb to use the verb in different ways than we normally use it. This form has many jobs in English. I recommend that you think of this form in three ways. The three main jobs are:1. Verb tenses: Continuous/Progressive action for a period of timeWe use the ing form with our tenses (present, past, future, etc) to emphasize action that continues or progresses for a period of time. We call these forms of our tenses Continuous or Progressive (you will see both terms for the same thing). These actions don't start and then stop; they continue.A. Present continuous - I am eating my dinner now so I am busy for a while.B. Past continuous - I was eating my dinner last night when my sister called me.C. Future continuous - Soon I will be eating my dinner for a while but I can talk now.D. Present perfect continuous - I have been eating my dinner at 8 PM for many years. (This has continued for many years up to the present moment and hasn't stopped yet. Each occurrence was a continuous action).E. Past perfect continuous – I had been eating my dinner at 8 PM for many years until I decided to eat earlier at 7 PM. (A previous action continued for many years in a continuous manner each time before a certain event occurred - I suddenly changed my habits)There are other tenses that use the continuous/progressive but we don't use them very much at all. So adding the continuous form to a tense just emphasizes action that is continuing. We picture ourselves in the middle of the action as it is, was or will be occurring. It is not action that started and stopped.2. Present Participle –This form of the ing verb is used to describe things like an adjective describes things. They are used with nouns. You can say the energetic (adjective) man or the jumping (present participle) man. When we use the present participle we are talking about actions or activities the man does. So because it is action, we say it is active. The laughing girl insulted her friend. The girl actively does the action where she laughs. We could also say the girl who laughed insulted her friend. But it is shorter to say the laughing girl. Remember that this is only used to express an active meaning. Sometimes we can use the present participle after a thing to describe it. I saw the man jumping into the swimming pool. Jump is not an actual verb tense here. It is like an adjective that describes the man. Which man or what is is he like? I describe him as jumping.3. Gerunds - This form of the ing verb acts like a noun or a thing. It is not a verb tense, it is not an adjective, it is a verb that acts like a noun. I can say charity is a good thing to practice. Or I can use a gerund instead. Giving money to the poor is a good thing to practice. I like eating food from other countries. I like to experiment with speaking in different accents. The gerund can be used in the same situations that nouns can be used.EDNow it all gets more confusing when we introduce the past participle. If a verb follows the rules (regular) we simply add the letters ed to make the past participle form. It looks exactly like the past tense form, but it is used differently.Past tense: He liked sports as a child. Past participle: He was liked by many children as a child.If the verb is irregular, it doesn't use the ed. It will use many different endings that don't follow the rules. And many times the past participle is different than the past form. We have to memorize these irregular forms.Past tense: The British ran the company for 5 years. Past Participle: The company was run by the British for 5 years.The past participle (just like the present participle) is also used as an adjective to describe things. But while the present participle describes a person or thing by emphasizing the action it does, the past participle describes a person or thing by the action it receives or the way it feels. For example the dog was walked by his owner. Did the dog walk the owner? No. The dog received the action. It was walked by the owner. So we say the dog was passive by receiving the action from the owner.The past participle is also used to talk about our feelings or conditions. We have feelings because things happen to us. In the case of feelings, we use the past participle as follows: the girl was worried all day about her parents. It is how she felt because something happened to her parents and this fact affected her. We can also say, the worried girl was concerned about her parents.A thing can be in a specific condition because it receives action. The written homework was difficult. The homework was written by a student.BEING SERIOUSLY INJUREDSo now we can get to the phrase that started all of this - Being seriously Injured was used to talk about a dog.We call this a phrase because it is more than one word. We use all these three words together as one meaning. So it is a phrase. This phrase can be used as either a gerund or a present participle. Let me give you simple examples first. Let’s use being first.Being happy is a good thing – Being happy is called a gerund phrase. It starts with an ing form which is used as a noun. But happy is part of the phrase. Being happy is the action of experiencing happiness. So being happy is used like a noun or a thing. It is the state of happiness.Being very happy, the little girl sang a song. Being very happy is called a participial phrase. It starts with an ing form which is used to describe the little girl, so it is a participle, not a gerund. What kind of little girl is this. She is one who is being very happy. This is how we describe her.Now the word injured in our phrase adds more confusion. Because injured is a past participle that describes the fact that the dog passively received an injury. So the dog is injured.So what you now have is a combination of the ing form and the ed form in one large phrase. So the dog is actively experiencing (being) something. The dog is actively experiencing something that it received passively. So the confusing part is that it is a combination of active, first and passive second.Now I can use this larger phrase as either a gerund or a participle. The first example that follows (a) is a gerund. The gerund phrase is used like a noun or a thing. The second example (b) is a participial phrase that describes the dog like an adjective.(a)Being seriously injured is a very dangerous thing for a dog to experience.Being seriously injured = the active experience of receiving an injury passively(b)The dog, being seriously injured, crawled to his owner.Being seriously injured = a description of the dog which helps us understand why it crawled. Normally it would run.CONCLUSIONCheck the following: The (1) interesting speaker (2) interested me so much that I was quite (3) interested in his topic. (4) Interesting another person in a topic is not always easy.Can you identify the forms 1, 2, 3 and 4 used above?If you made it to this point and you understand all of this, I give you kudos. Kudos are recognition of a task well done. Maybe you would rather have a gift.If you are totally confused, think of this as simply an exposure to the topic. You may need to learn other things first, before you learn this topic.

DO CELL PHONES AND DRIVING MIX?

Posted by Bill the English Teacher on March 4, 2009

This blog is not directly related to English, but it requires reading and perhaps commenting in English.Technology is wonderful and gives us many conveniences. But does the use of these modern conveniences require some responsibility in using them? A big issue in the USA is the use of cell phones while driving. As the risk of automobile accidents rises with the use of cell phones the debate has arisen as well as to whether we should be using cell phones while driving. People have very strong feelings both ways. The state of California, which is often the first state to come up with new laws, has made it illegal to use cell phones while driving. Some people argue that it takes their freedoms away. Others say it is necessary to reduce accidents. I am one who supports the California law and I hope it will be introduced to my state of Colorado.I have just been involved in an auto accident that further reinforces my belief in banning cell phone use while driving. This last Sunday morning my wife and I were returning home from church. The traffic light turned red and I stopped the car. About two seconds later my wife and I heard a very loud noise and felt a very strong impact thatpushed our car two or three feet to the right into a curb. Immediately after the impact, we saw a car driving very fast from the lane to our left. It was out of control. It was like the person had their foot on the accelerator. The car veered toward the left and crossed over three lanes toward the curb. It jumped over the curb and went over an embankment down a hill into the Platte River. The car ended wheels-up in the river. The young 17-year-old girl was trapped in the car, but was able to crawl out the window and swim to land. Several people rushed to help the driver of the car while we called emergency services.Luckily the girl was not injured very much. She could have been killed.We were unable to go to the girl because the police told us to remain with our car. But there were 5 fire trucks, 5 police cars and one ambulance to help. The police officer told us the girl amazingly was okay in spite of the ordeal. He said she admitted she looked down to use her cell phone, did not see us stopped, nor the red light. After she hit out car, she panicked and put her foot on the accelerator instead of the brakes. We were very glad she was okay. But now we have to buy a new car when we could not really afford to do that. The car was totaled, which means the total amount to fix the car was more than the value of the car., Insurance only gives a limited amount of money for buying a new car. A photo follows to show you the damage.So, due to the irresponsible use of a cell phone while driving, she almost killed herself and could have injured us. Luckily our seat belts prevented that. But now we face financial difficulties. I am sure she will face very angry parents. Why do I write this blog? I want to make everyone aware of how dangerous it is to use cell phones while driving, no matter how skilled a person thinks they are in doing this. I can understand the use of “hands-free” phone use. But even that is considered to be dangerous because the attention of the driver is divided between driving and talking (according to the American Auto Association in the USA). You may disagree with me, but I want you to be warned for your own safety.

Phrasal Verbs: This is a challenge to anybody who wants to attempt it. It is an example of how we English speakers love to use phrasal verbs. They are a large part of our everyday informal conversati

Posted by Bill the English Teacher on February 20, 2009

Phrasal Verbs: This is a challenge to anybody who wants to attempt it.It is an example of how we English speakers love to use phrasal verbs. They are a large part of our everyday informal conversation. Phrasal verbs are combinations of verbs with prepositions (acting as particles or pieces of the phrasal verb) to change the meaning of the original verb. For example,"When do you normally get up?" "Get" normally means "receive." But this phrasal verb usage actually means,"When do you normally arise from bed?"If you are brave and adventuresome, can you "translate" this paragraph from informal phrasal verbs to formal English verbs without any phrasal verbs? The reward will not be a trip to an exotic country, nor will it be a large cash prize. You will have to settle for my recognition of your effort in accepting this challenge. I know, this is not a marketable reward. My recognition is not valued by the world. But your satisfaction with taking on (Oops! a phrasal verb) the challenge and perhaps learning something should be enough for you. Who will attempt this challenge?I really get off on English, but what puts me off is when some native speakers put down English learners who hardly get by and can't keep up with them. How can they get away with putting learners through that? Instead they should look out for them, put up with them and come down from their own pride and get down with them on their level. They should look up to learners as brave people who pull themselves up from the initial challenge of learning English and run up against phrasal verbs without giving up. They just go on with their studies and get over the challenges and eventually get through them. If we don't hold up our English learners they will get down on themselves and will drop out of class and do away with all their efforts.